## emerge-gem

Goal: Transparently install gems into Portage. Should be as easy as “emerge-gem gemname”.

### Setup

gem install Pistos-emerge-gem --source http://gems.github.com

In /etc/make.conf set (or append to) PORTDIR_OVERLAY:

PORTDIR_OVERLAY=/usr/local/portage

### Usage

emerge-gem rack -- -atv

emerge-gem will also determine gem dependencies and emerge them, too.

### Notes

USE emerge-gem AT YOUR OWN RISK! It is still very much alpha software as of 2009-03-01.

If you have been using the gem command to install gems outside of Portage’s control, you are advised to make use of “gem list -l” and “gem uninstall” to check for and remove previously installed gems. This lets Portage operate with a clean slate. After you emerge-gem, you can use “gem list -l gemname” to verify that emerge-gem installed the gem correctly. You can emerge eix to automate this check; emerge-gem will use eix if found.

emerge-gem works by using the Rubygems system/library to find gem sources and dependencies, and to automatically create wrapper ebuilds for them. It then issues an emerge command. By default, it uses the local overlay. Use –help for CLI switches you can use to specify directories.

You should also note that if you have installed a gem via Portage in the past, and later upgraded it with Rubygems, emerge will complain about file collisions if you have collision-protect enabled in your /etc/make.conf. To deal with this, uninstall the gem using Rubygems first.